The Way We Were Revised and Rewritten
by Pepperminty
Summary: Grissom and Sara's tempers flare, but the truth may hurt more than they think. Rewritten due to author's unhappiness with original. Final Chapter Up.
1. Default Chapter

_**The Way We Were (revised)**_

**Summary: **Grissom and Sara's tempers flare, but the truth may hurt more than they thought.

**Rating: T**

**Disclaimer:** Nope despite a rewrite, I still don't own them

**Pairing: **Grissom and Sara

**Spoilers: **Up to and including Nesting Dolls is fair game

**A/N: **So this is a rewrite, I wasn't happy with how the other one turned out, that's the main reason for the lack of update for 3 months (sorry!). So hopefully, this is a little better and can go in a different direction now. Enjoy! And thankyou for your patience! Hopefully the next few chapters will be a little quicker. D

_**Chapter 1**_

She pushed him, forcefully.

"Don't you _dare_ say that!" The force of her push staggered him backward, almost tripping over his own feet as her barrage of words caught him off guard.

"Don't you dare come in here and presume by telling me that you love me, that everything is all of a sudden going to be okay. It's never okay, nothing is ever okay, and the sooner you stop trying to fix me the better okay Grissom? You can stop wasting your time. You can't fix me, I'm not one of you're fucking experiments."

He was stunned, he could feel her breath on his face, the sheer rage and hurt in her eyes struck at his soul, and he grabbed her hands in his

"But-"

"But what Grissom? What you think you know me now" she squirmed out of his grip, pushing him hard against the chest, bunching up his shirt and yelling into his face "You think you know what makes me tick now? Think you have the right to make presumptions about me, because for one second I momentarily let you into my life? Come on, Grissom. Tell me then. You know everything about everything. You sit back and observe everyone so you can spout facts 24/7. I've got news for you Griss, analysing life isn't fucking living it. Tell me then. Come on, fucking tell me then. Why can't I sleep at night still? You think because I told you about my family that gives you a one way ticket into my life? Don't count on it Grissom. You made the decision you didn't want anything to do with my life a long time ago."

"Sara, I want to deal with this" his words fuelled her anger further, her eyes sparked.

"You want to deal with this?" she asked incredulously. "We or more specifically you, already dealt with this. Several times. There's nothing left to deal with. You had 5 years Grissom, 5 God damn years. And you said nothing. Even you can't be that clueless" she joked. "It was your decision and you made it. So don't come back to me trying to undo it claiming obliviousness, you seen and know everything that has happened as much as me, so don't try and go back on it" she glared into his eyes, trying to hurt him as much as she was hurting right now A hurt that demanded your attention, made you sick to the stomach, until you begged it to stop. "I waited, for so long, that I….forgot what I was waiting for. And then, you would look at me, in a way, which I can't even explain. I loved the way you would look at me. And the way, you would talk about me, to other people, the way that you would say my name." She looked down at the floor, the intricate patterns of her tiles, fitting together so easily, so perfectly.

"Why Grissom, why couldn't you talk to me about us? Did I ask too much? God Grissom, you gave me nothing, and now, that's all that I have left." Her shoulders slumped, defeated.

"Grissom, just go okay? We've both said some things we're going to regret…so I'm sorry. Um you're probably uncomfortable, so…" she moved swiftly toward the door, unwilling to let him respond in any way but to leave. He looked at her form, so resigned to their fate, wiped sweat off his brow that had formed and shuffled toward her door, placing his arm caringly on her arm.

"God Grissom don't please" she pulled her arm away, as if she had been struck

"Is this the way it's going to be now?" he asked softly. She sighed, glancing outside into the morning sun, people going about their lives,

"When was it any different Gil?"

"Look at me Sara" he demanded

"No"

"Why?"

"Because if I do, I don't trust myself to let you walk out the door while I have to watch you leave here again. I don't trust myself not to ask you to stay" He lingered, her words striking. He wanted to say something, but in her presence, the words remained elusive and unspoken.

She slammed the door shut on him, out of her apartment, out of her life. She peeked out the peephole at his retreating figure, sighing softly, _'Stay with me Grissom, stay with me forever and a day'._

He had the answers to her questions, which he had originally gone there to answer. But in her presence, no matter what he did, the words would not come. All he could result to was wishing to hold her, to let at least feel what he couldn't bring himself to say._ 'You have a quote for every occasion Gil, but when she pours her heart out to you, you can't even mumble a yes or no.'_

She slid her hand down the door, releasing the cool metal from her hand. She could feel the tears behind her eyes. She turned her back to the door, to him, crumbling slowly against its sturdy frame, her body raking with sobs. Only it didn't pick her up, its arms didn't envelope around her and it didn't help her when she fell down. "I don't know how to do this anymore!" she shouted to no one in particular.


	2. Chapter 2

_**The Way We Were (revised)**_

**Summary: **Grissom and Sara's tempers flare, but the truth may hurt more than they thought.

**Rating: T**

**Disclaimer:** Nope despite a rewrite, I still don't own them

**Pairing: **Grissom and Sara

**Spoilers: **Up to and including Nesting Dolls is fair game

**A/N: **A new chapter! Thanks for the reviews, they are very greatly appreciated.

_**Chapter 2**_

Work became monotonous, it held no joy. His team was gone, and any remnants seemed to be disappearing before his eyes. Sara began to fade into the background, her eyes held no sparkle, no determination. Just lifelessness. Her work would never suffer of course, he though she would rather die than allow that to happen. But she held no passion for doing the right thing, for the victims. The fire in her heart seemed to be going out before his eyes. They were nameless faces to her.

A new case, a new day, avoiding Sara at every chance he got. He didn't know how else to function, so he resorted to what he knew best. He retreated. He stopped talking to her, never met her eyes. It never ceased to amaze him however, how professional she remained. They were not best friends, sure, and the tension was uncomfortable at times, but everything that was said remained in the confines of Sara's apartment, and he would not take that away from her.

He still wasn't really sure why he had decided to got to her apartment that night, a momentary lapse of concentration on his part, where he decided he needed to fix her pain. A night where he had decided that he needed to know if she was getting any better, or simply slipping back into her routine. 

_A knock on the door had awoken Sara from her slumber on the couch. Rubbing her eyes, she thought the pizza she had ordered an hour ago had finally arrived. Stumbling over her coffee table, she rubbed the feeling back into her legs, as the knocking became insistent. _

"_Alright, Christ, you're the one that's bloody late" she responded whilst opening the door_

"_You better not be expecting me to pay full price for…Oh" She shuffled from one foot to the other nervously eyeing the man standing in front of her._

"_Grissom…uh you're not exactly who I was expecting" she self-consciously closed her bath robe, still confused at his sudden appearance._

"_Was there something in particular you were after"_

"_No" Ahh…the man of many words makes his appearance again she thought._

"_Would you like to come in then?" she moved out of the way of the door to allow him entry into her home. He shuffled past her, brushing her arm on the way through._

"_I did have pizza coming, but uh…apparently Joey's pizza delivery needs to be re-evaluated" he moved around her home, assessing something._

"_What has you so intrigued?" she questioned_

"_You moved your furniture around"_

"_Yeah, needed a change I guess." he continued to move around her home, touching this, admiring that. She couldn't understand why he was at her home; nothing overly spectacular had happened at work, open and shut cases. She had spent most of her night catching up on paperwork. Her mind was at a blank to understand why-_

"_This needs water"_

"_What…sorry?"_

"_This plant, it needs water"_

"_Oh yeah, I water all my plants at night, so don't worry, it'll get watered. I'm not killing it." He released the plants leaf from his grasp, moving to observe her CD collection. She continued to stand behind her arm chair, hands folded across her chest, as if Grissom was prying through her mind by poking through her house._

"_I love you" he stated bluntly_

"_Excuse me?"_

"_I love you" he repeated_

"_Don't you **dare** say that"_

He closed his eyes at the memory, rubbing his temples. She had caused him some slip-ups before, _honey, beauty_. But he had promised himself he would never tell her that. He wouldn't place that kind of a burden on her. But in her home, with his plant on her shelf, she in her bathrobe, with no makeup on, skin aching to be touched and loved, he needed to try and give her that. He needed to give her what no one else had in her life, and he couldn't stop himself. God, all he had wanted to do was help her, and he ended up making things so much worse.

If he could get through his lifetime without having to hear that kind of pain in her voice again, he would thank the heavens. She looked so utterly defeated; he couldn't stand it. This powerful woman, that inspired him, challenged him, looking so…crushed. She had to physically push him away, it was tearing him up inside that he had done that to her. He had caused her to push him away. _'Congratulations Gil' _he breathed _'you finally did it. You made her push you away, you made the one piece of beauty, innocence, one of the only people in the world that loves you, push you away'_

Grissom sat in his office, in the dark confines of his torments. He couldn't rid himself of her, she was everywhere, she was his breath of life. He watched her, swiftly moving down the hall, her head bowed, keys in hand, ready to return home, passing by everyone without a wave or goodbye, and he realised something. He realised what she had become, what he had helped her to be. Sara had turned into Grissom, isolated. A ghost. She was him.

Life as it seemed, is not without its own sense of irony

TBC

I know I'm not deserving of your trust right now, but if by chance you change your mind, you know I will not let you down. I don't believe anybody feels the way I do about you I do now. There are so many things that I want to say to you, but I don't know how. Sara, I wish that I could go back to the start, and tell you everything, everything that I wanted to. But I can't.


	3. Chapter 3

_**The Way We Were (revised)**_

**Summary: **Grissom and Sara's tempers flare, but the truth may hurt more than they thought.

**Rating: T**

**Disclaimer:** Nope despite a rewrite, I still don't own them

**Pairing: **Grissom and Sara

**Spoilers: **Up to and including Nesting Dolls is fair game

**A/N: **A new chapter! Thanks for the reviews, they are very greatly appreciated. I don't actually know if Sara has a dimple in her left cheek, but she does now!

"**Love the heart that hurts you, but never hurt the heart that loves you."**

_**Chapter 3**_

He had just made the fastest decision of his life.

After seeing her walking out of the building, so reminiscent of him only a few years ago. He decided that she wasn't going to be like him, he would be damned if she would allow herself to be confined to her torments the way that he had done to himself. If there was one thing he could do for her, it was going to be this.

He ran out to the car park, determined to catch her before she left, preferring the face to face contact over asking her over the phone, at least this way she couldn't hang up on him. Running to her car, he knocked on her window.

And scared the living daylights out of her.

"Jesus Christ! Grissom!" She yelped, winding down her window

"What the hell are you doing?"

"I just wanted to catch you before you left" 

"And scaring me to death was just an added bonus?" she chided, half-smiling. He loved it when she smiled, not only because momentarily he got to see her cheeky side. But it was because when she smiled, her entire face lit up. She was one of those people, that when they smile, make it seem like nothing else matters in the world, but for the fact that for that one moment, you are able to share in that moment of happiness, and receive a gift of contentment that you can't bear to let go. She didn't only smile with her mouth, but with the twinkle in her eyes, the slight dimple in her left cheek, the way it only curled when she really smiled, had Grissom intoxicated.

"Yeah I guess"

"So what did you want?"

"Um…oh yeah, I think we need to talk" her hands gripped the steering wheel tighter. She had tried to keep the conversation light and professional and make a quick exit.

"Uh…No, I'm uh really tired, I just want to go home and get some sleep"

"Sara, I really think we should talk"

"Because it went so well last time" her mouth spat out before she could even think to stop it. She sighed closing her eyes, '_well that was stupid_' she thought.

Her words hurt him. She had the unforgiving power to do that. To hurt him. He was determined that he wasn't going to let her run away again, not before he sorted this out.

"That's why we need to talk" she sighed resignedly, her head slightly shaking. She wasn't getting out of this. She rolled her eyes,

"When and where?"

"Well, you said that you're tired so how about I follow you to your place, and after we talk you can go straight to bed?" she was momentarily startled by his thoughtfulness, but passed it off, slapping her sunglasses on.

"Fine, see you soon" she sped home, determined to not have his presence in her rear view mirror, reminding her of what awaited when she got home. She decided that she would forget, for twenty minutes anyway, and turned up the radio for the fourth time.

* * *

She wasn't expecting him so early; she had just begun pouring herself a cup of tea when she heard the soft rasping at her door.

"Its open" she called. She heard him shuffle into her home, gently closing the door behind him.

"Did you want anything?" she asked, walking out to meet him.

"No thanks"

"Sara, I'm sorry, I don't know how else to say it." He stood, his hands in his pockets

"I love you. Those three words have my life in them."

Her eyes didn't soften, her mouth turned grim. Her eyes flashed with pain, then sadness, then anger. "You've got to be kidding! Christ, you just don't get it. You don't do this to people Grissom" she threw the cup against the wall, the tea splashing against its surface, slowly trickling down, like the tears she wanted to be able to let go.

"Why now? Why? I don't fucking understand Grissom! I have lived with this for _five years_ Grissom" her voice etched with pain. "You can give me all the sorry's you want. It still _hurts_, and I…I don't know how to stop it from hurting" Her face broke, her breathing hitched in her throat,

"It never stops hurting, no matter how much I hate and try to hurt you, it's always there. In the pit of my stomach, it eats me up inside Gil. When I see you, when I hear you, this pain wraps itself around me, it burns over me. Knowing that we can never be together. What do you want from me? What are you so God damned afraid of!"

"I'm afraid of you! Of the power that you have to hurt me Sara. Jesus, you don't see it do you? Real love is millions of miles past falling in love with anyone or anything. And I'm so scared, because you are my breath of life Sara, when I screw this up, and you leave, I'll suffocate. I won't know how to live without you, and" he shook his head, staring at the floor.

"I just wanted you to know, so that you didn't think that it was only you. I won't do it Sara. I can't" he looked at her, pressing his hand to his forehead

"It's too hard Sara"

"No one said it would be easy" she breathed

"No one said it would be this hard"

**TBC**


	4. Chapter 4

_**The Way We Were (revised)**_

**Summary: **Grissom and Sara's tempers flare, but the truth may hurt more than they thought.

**Rating: T ( Some language)  
**

**Disclaimer:** Nope despite a rewrite, I still don't own them

**Pairing: **Grissom and Sara

**Spoilers: **Up to and including Nesting Dolls is fair game

**A/N: **Very long time between drinks, sorry folks! Reviews are greatly appreciated, and thankyou to all those who have left reviews so far.

"**I love you  
Not only for what you are  
But for what I am  
When I am with you"**

"No one ever said it would be this hard"

* * *

Pain flickered in her eyes. Of course that would be what he would say. It was an out. An easy way out. She tapped her fingers against her hip, feeling the fabric of her shirt absently, its softness. Rubbing her fingers through her hair, she lamented not knowing how to do this, she didn't know how to explain it to him, how to explain anything to him. It was never supposed to be this difficult, after 'I love you' nothing else was supposed to matter, save for the fact that they were in love. They were supposed to dance and smile and make love all through the night.

"Fine Grissom, you go through life, take this easy way out, again, like you always do. Because not even trying is so easy. To say that it's too hard, that you're scared even before trying. Fine, you go through your life like that, and see where you are. Don't come back to me in twenty years, still alone because you couldn't take a chance… a chance on me, on us."

"After all of this Sara, I don't understand. Something I have never understood. Why do you still love me?"

Only Grissom could ask her to explain love. He had to ask the difficult questions. How do you explain love? How do explain the feeling that when he walked into a room, she could think of nothing else but how his arms would feel around her waist, what his mouth would taste like, and in another moment rip the fantasies from her heart with a knife, leaving a gaping hole in her life.

"I love you because…because if I know what love is, it's because of you. You taught me what it was like to feel love, if only for a little while" her gaze swept to the floor, unable to meet the challenge in his eyes.

"I never thought I would have to tell you like this" she mused bitterly. "I never thought that this is it would be. I guess the romantic in me thought that it would happen after dinner at a nice restaurant, flowers and chocolate" her eyes were lost in the fantasies "at least now I can't accuse you of being clueless" she added darkly.

"What do we do now?" he questioned

"How should I know? What am I, the fucking expert?" anger panged through her heart like an electric shock coursing through her body. She didn't get it. She didn't get this man. He was ending it, forever, right here and now, and then had the audacity to ask what they were supposed to do.

"I don't want to leave"

"Why?" she pleaded

"Because I was comfortable inside my shell, but it has become my hell, alone. Because this is where I belong" she stalked over to him, pointing her finger in his face, anger engraved across her soft features.

"You just stood there and told me that I wasn't worth it. You stood here, I stood there" she gestured "That it was too hard. So fucking leave Grissom! Get the fuck out! I'm tired of being your Yo-Yo that you whip out whenever you need a little ego boost. Just…just…go" he grabbed her arms, wrapping them around him.

"No Grissom let me go, God damn it!" she squirmed, valiantly trying to get away from him, but his body was too big, too strong.

"Dammit Sara, I'm sorry. I need you to feel this. This is what I want feel all the time" she resigned herself, and slumped in his grip, feeling a monotone beat in the distances of her mind

"Do you feel it?" he breathed

"What"

He manoeuvred her hand to his heart, and then placed her other hand on her hand. Two hearts beating in synchrony.

"Does this change anything?" she questioned

"I know I don't deserve your trust. But, on reflection, one of the things I think I needed to learn was to allow myself to be loved. I didn't think that you would still love me after everything that I have done. I wanted you to be free…from me" he looked toward the floor, desperate to feel every inch of her body against his. Her protection, her warmth seeped into every part of him filling him with her beauty. She lifted his chin, his eyes to meet hers. A smile started at the side of her lips.

"This was how it was supposed to be" she cradled his head in her hands, meeting his lips with her own, soothing him, pouring her soul to him through the kiss.

He had said to her that his love had his life in it. Now, when she said 'I love you', those three words had her life in them.

The End.

"**I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever."**


End file.
